Reliving the days of retro gaming from the 80's, 90's and 00's along with the discussion of modern day titles.

Gaming Consoles- Sega Saturn: (1994)

As many of us know the Sega Saturn game console was the successor to the Sega Genesis/Master System which was released in 1989. After the Sega Genesis was released we were all anticipating what the following console would be like similar to Nintendo’s SNES. With the success of various games such as the Sonic series many people could not wait to see how Sega was going to follow up following the release of the Genesis. When Sega Saturn was released in late 1994 many people were excited to see if the fun factor was as high as the Sega Genesis. There were many exciting titles for the Sega Saturn including Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter 2, Guardian Heroes, Nights into Dreams, Sonic 3D Blast, X-men Children of the Atom and Shining the Holy Ark. The Sega Saturn was also able to duplicate arcade games such as X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel vs Street Fighter which was not done in the PS1 ports.

The Sega Saturn was a pretty cool game console for its time but it was very expensive during its initial release. When the Sega Saturn was first released it was priced around $399 while the Sega Genesis was worth approximately $189. The Sega Saturn was more than twice the amount of the Sega Genesis and also costed more than the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation console. This fifth generation console also utilizes a soundchip known as the Yamaha YMF292 which provided excellent soundtracks to some of the most popular games released for the Sega Saturn such as Sonic 3D Blast, X-Men Children of Atom and many more. Many people probably found it shocking that the Sega Saturn was priced higher than some of its competitors. Even though, some people would argue that the Sega Saturn was overpriced and did not sell as much as its competitors. However, the Sega Saturn had managed to produce arcade quality games that both the Nintendo 64 and sometimes even Sony PlayStation could not produce.

While Sega Saturn was very expensive it paled in comparison to the likes of the Neo-Geo AES which was priced for over $650 during its initial release. However, despite being cheaper than the AES the Sega Saturn was still more expensive than the Neo-Geo CD which was approximately $300 when it was first released in 1994. The original price for the Sega Saturn might have been very high but it still managed to sell over nine million units worldwide. The amount of units the Sega Saturn sold was pretty impressive but it paled in comparison to the Sega Genesis which sold over 30 million units worldwide. The Sega Saturn sold about 30 percent of what Sega Genesis did worldwide probably because of a variety of factors including higher pricing and more competition in the video game industry. Some people might argue that if the Sega Saturn was priced around the same as Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation it would have sold more units worldwide.

However, the Sega Saturn had managed to sell slightly more units than its predecessor known as the Sega Dreamcast which was first released in 1998. Many people would argue that Sega Saturn was a good precursor for the Dreamcast. The Sega Saturn was also great midway point for the transition from 2D and 3D gaming between Sega Genesis and Dreamcast. While some people often question the value of the Sega Saturn game console others believe that it does not get the recognition that it deserves. The 90’s was such a great decade for gaming and many consoles such as Sega Saturn made a huge contribution why many people see that time period as the golden age.